Grouvee - A Goodreads for Video Games
If you're a serious gamer, and you're looking for a good way to catalog your video game collection and network with other gamers, Grouvee is pretty much a dream come true. Peter Corsaro, the man behind the new social networking site, describes it thus:
Grouvee is a social video game collection website. You can create virtual shelves and categorize your video game collection however you want.
Grouvee has about 40,000 games in its database, all imported using the wonderful Giantbomb API. We’re starting to get a decent user base with a little over 600 people signed up in the first 6 months or so.
Grouvee started in 2010 as a blog for video game news and reviews (you can find Corsaro's video reviews here), but sometime in mid-2012, Corsaro, a programmer by profession, decided that what the Internet needed was not more news and reviews, but a better way for people to track their collections and make new connections with gamers that shared their interests. As a social networking site, Grouvee's only been around for a little less than a year, but it already offers a slick and robust service.
Creating a Grouvee account is easy, and once you're set up, you can sign in with Facebook or Twitter.
When you first create your account, you start with four shelves: Playing, for games that are in media res; Backlog, for games awaiting your attention; a Wish List, which you can gleefully cram full of everything you've ever wanted; and Played, where you can show off the games that you've finished. Shelves can be sorted by title, release date, rating, and the date that it was added to your collection.
If the basic shelves don't do it for you, you can add as many additional shelves as required. Many users have Favorites shelves, shelves for Reviewed games, Top 10 lists, and shelves that break their collections into genres like RPG, Adventure, MMO, etc. All of the games are drawn from Giant Bomb's enormous database which is updated daily so your should be able to find just about any game that's ever had a commercial release.
Grouvee also allows you to record start and end dates for the games that you've played, keep running commentary on games that you're playing (which may be shared with others or kept private), and comment on other people's commentary. This impromptu dialogue is a great way to get hints and tips if you happen to get stuck in a game.
Grouvee is also a great way to find out about new games or old games that you've never heard of. After you've logged in, the main page displays an activity feed so you can see what other people are adding to their collections and read their comments about the games that they're playing. Since Grouvee is dominated by game aficionados, it's a great way to get exposure to new and obscure older titles.
Like Goodreads, you can also search the Grouvee database to read reviews written by other members, write your own reviews, and rate them on a five-star scale. Most of these options are available from anywhere in the site, so if you see something in the feed that appeals to you, you can add it instantly to your wish list, or rate a game you'd forgotten about while browsing somebody else's list.
Grouvee isn't the only video game cataloging and networking site, of course. Giant Bomb also allows you to set up lists, rate and review games, and network with others, and offers a number of additional features as well, including a thriving forum, game wikis, and industry news. But Grouvee does one thing and does it well: it has an easy learning curve, is tightly focused, and will feel much more familiar and user-friendly for people who are used to Facebook and Goodreads. So if you're looking for a good way to keep track of your games and share your passion with others, Grouvee might be just the thing you're looking for.
